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I doped from '98: White

Australian Matt White has revealed he took performance-enhancing drugs for most of his professional career, saying he became desensitised to injecting himself after initially feeling rattled.

White, who last week announced he'd completed a backdated six-month suspension from the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, says he only stopped doping in the last year of his racing career because he had ''had enough''.

White confessed last year to doping while a part of Lance Armstrong's US Postal team in the early 2000s after his name emerged in a US anti-doping report that contributed to Armstrong's downfall.

The admission cost him his job as director of Australian professional team Orica-GreenEDGE and also his part-time role with the national road team for Cycling Australia.

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On Sunday White described the pressure he felt as a 24-year-old.

''There was certainly nothing that motivated me to start doping. The thing that was a real shock to me was when I arrived in Italy in that environment - and we're talking 1998 here - that doping was in your face,'' he told SBS TV's Cycling Central.

''You would go to races and they weren't hiding anything. I was really shocked. I grew up racing for the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport], racing for Australian national teams where we're not exposed to any of that sort of stuff.

''I thought that I needed to use performance-enhancing drugs to keep my job. And at the end of the day I probably did because it was so widespread it was ridiculous.''

White said there was little risk because of the lack of appropriate testing.

''The hardest thing I've ever had to do was make that first injection,'' he said. ''I remember it really rattled me … but you do get desensitised. I knew that I was doing something wrong but everyone around me was doing something wrong.''